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MANE

Power Makes us Sick (PMS) is a feminist collective focusing on autonomous

health care practices and networks.

P-M-S.LIFE

POWERMAKESUSSICK@RISEUP.NET

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Printed in Berlin
Summer 2017

Power Makes us Sick (PMS) is a feminist collective focusing on autonomous
health care practices and networks. PMS seeks to understand the ways

that our mental, physical, and social health is impacted by imbalances in

and abuses of power. We can see that mobility, forced or otherwise, is an
increasingly common aspect of life in the anthropocene. PMS is motivated to
develop free tools of solidarity, resistance, and sabotage that respond to these
conditions and are informed by a deep concern for planetary well-being.

Anti-copyright notice: reprint and distribute this publication and the ideas
contained within it freely, spread the word, but do not attempt to profit from it
personally. Unless otherwise noted, the information contained here is written
anonymously and is ficticious. Any resemblance to real people or events is
totally a coincidence.

The scattered text printed in all caps Arial font is derived from “Our Vendetta:
Witches vs Fascists” from the Yerbamala collective.

Get in touch @
powermakesussick@riseup.net

More information:
p-m-s. life

This one Is
dedicated to
all the witches
and whores out
there killing it
and making a
kill(ing). <3

SELF-CARE CAN’T CURE SOCIAL DISEASES

MOST OF US ARE NOT DOCTORS

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—

ACCOUNTABILITY is too oft left off the roundtable of
revolutionary theory and discourse. ‘Accountability’ - or in
German you might say ‘verantwortlichkeit’ - as we understand
it is a kind of social responsibility. We could describe this as
an ability to be called upon, an ‘answerability’, or a mutual
responsibility that is held between friends and comrades. When
we move through public space and we begin to see or feel a
person around us fall, our basic instinct is to reach for them,
or, at least support and recognize their state of momentary
failure, by expressing minor alarm. To understand our own place
within accountability is to recognize that even without knowing
it, when we look out into space, we are always also looking for
a person about to fall. The word has its roots in accomptare (to
account), and can be understood as the ability to provide an
account in social and political contexts. What would it mean to
be accountable to, to answer to, the spaces and atmospheres
we inhabit or create? Where and when do we draw the lines of
our responsibility? Why are some of these lines more thick than
others? What are the conditions in which they shift? We start
with our own responsibility.

In situations of conflict, the options toward progress fall out from
the answer to a simple question: will we continue to interact and
partake in one another’s lives, or not? As we submit ourselves,
through information, and through protected or exposed
witnessing, to the reality of shared fragile condition upon the land
surface of our biosphere, embedded as we are within vulnerable
networks of life, we know that there is only one response; we
must continue to nourish our living relationships above all else.
We cannot just ‘drop’ people, just like we cannot deny the reality
of the air we need to breathe. Not only this, but we must continue
with a degree of responsibility and seriousness that we may
have turned from before.

SELF-CARE CAN’T CURE SOCIAL DISEASES

MOST OF US ARE NOT DOCTORS

Power Makes us Sick (PMS) is a feminist collective focusing on autonomous

health care practices and networks.

P-M-S.LIFE

POWERMAKESUSSICK@RISEUP.NET

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Acute health problems cycle back to longer term environmental,
social or ecological weaknesses. In this way being accountable
to health functions as a viable practice to bear forth in relation to
every body, every situation. When we hold-ourselves-to-it, we're
able to draw the subject into a longer lineage of causation and
interrelation. What are we doing when we hold a single person
accountable for the event of their rage in a way that occludes
the violences of systemic hate, apathy, or subservience? What
would be the effect of bearing this process of deeper inquiry of
accountability and dividuality, everywhere?

So these questions also get asked of the architectures of our
lives. Who gets to take up space? Who do we make space
for, and whose is taken away? What parts of our bodies and
psyches do the spaces we occupy appeal to? In what ways do
these spaces teach us how to move, talk, commune? Whose
space is respected, and whose is violated? For whom do we
hold space? To have, and to hold, in sickness and in health.

According to whose specifications is space structured and
allocated? There are three vacant homes for every houseless
person (in Portland, OR, USA) and palatial solitude for the
rich. Space is distributed according to the logic of artificial
scarcity. And then there is space aS means, means as space.
More broadly, forms of life are constrained by precarity; living
paycheck to paycheck, there’s no room to breathe, especially
in the basement. Racialized bodies are confined by various
legalities and illegalities to segregated neighborhoods, or else
warehoused in prisons.

Parcelized land, or so-called private properties, now hold the
architectures of confinement themselves: the prisons, apartment
complexes, and private schools. The question isn't: “whose land
is it anyway?”. Land, which is itself living, was never for any
one species or body to use to take power. How do we address
centuries of murder, rape, and the dispossession of harmonious
ecologies from their right to an equal say in how development
might happen? Is a ‘house’ the technology which differentiates
the politics of space from that of the environment? Who and
what make a house a home? What is at the core of the longing
we feel when we say that we are ‘homesick’?

As we tolerate private, surveilled spaces, we also tolerate and
perpetuate the gendering of space. Our movements through
the world as women, cisgender or not, trans and non-binary,

has been segregated into public and private, regulated and
vulnerable, masculine and feminine. Pushed ever back into the
confines of corporeal immediacy, we create technologies to veil
our bodies, to brandish them. Flashes of warpaint from behind
the flutter of a jeweled fan.

We must make do with secret handshakes because the urgency
of the need for a room of one’s own is overwhelming but access,
for many, is choked. All the bodies straining for space adopt
orphaned places, reeling from the slash and burn of capitalism.
Movement at anxious intensities, voluntary or involuntary,
betrays a life in flight. The migrant body in a new land is
assaulted by its environment, forced to create new immunities.
Too often, a failure to thrive in the farce of welcome. The dark
gift of barren soil.

In a lot of ways, accountability is a process that makes systems
of people stable from the inside out, at each smallest vector
within a broader network. This self-determination and self-
governance is autonomy, as something coming from the ground
upwards. Too often the notion of ‘autonomy’ is misunderstood or
used as an excuse to act selfishly or irresponsibly. To ‘take care
of oneself’ at the expense of taking care of one another.

But we are all situated within a world that is composed of many
moving parts - other people, things, bodies, plants, etc. We
should be working to break down the borders between us, built
by lusts for individuality. We know that life-giving intimacies
come from working together with others in a struggle. This is
connected to a responsibility we have toward other things that
give us life: soil, water, plants, animals, and the vibrant and
contagious freedoms that reflect among us when we pronounce
our love, care, and gratitude. Because we would not actually
survive as individuals, aided and abetted only by our lonesome,
we cannot prefigure a form of autonomy that operates in isolation.
Thus we acknowledge that we cannot bring this form of life into
being. This isn’t what the post-rev looks like, sorry. We have to
actually deal with the real shit on the ground, with the reality of
our corporeal existence, and with each other. If we can’t do this,
our work won't take traction and will trample over those for whom
the option of exit is not available, the beautiful lovers holding it all
together for us. Conflict is an integral aspect of human relations,
but that doesn't mean that it has to be authoritarian.

SELF-CARE CAN’T CURE SOCIAL DISEASES

MOST OF US ARE NOT DOCTORS

Power Makes us Sick (PMS) is a feminist collective focusing on autonomous

health care practices and networks.

P-M-S.LIFE

POWERMAKESUSSICK@RISEUP.NET

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When we practice accountability, we set ourselves up to become
more proficient care takers all the while being less reliant upon
professionalization, accreditation and legitimization. In health,
when you treat a symptom or illness, you treat it though, with,
and despite the habits of a body. The reverse is also true. When
you treat a body any kind of way, you affect its eventual illnesses
or wellnesses, and in some way you palpitate those which
persist in that body, from its past.

As this body is treated, you can also treat the relationship of
that body to something broader - the system which caused
or enabled the harm. Both the experience of trauma, lived or
witnessed, and the experience of this trauma’s treatment can
then lead to a reconsideration of the old tool that failed, that
cut or crushed the body. This is the process of accountability
and we are pursuing, and in that process understanding and
repositioning ourselves in relation to structures of power.

“When you come right down to it, our bodies are not the issue.
Biology is not the issue. The issue is power, in all the ways it
affects us.” Here Barbara Ehrenreich and Deirdre English from
the text Complaints and Disorders are speaking about biology
in terms of essentialized sex within the female/male binary. This
text was written in 1973, so their language around gender can
seem wholly insufficient today, but their analysis of power within
the medical industrial system is still insidiously relevant.

Queer the text presently and it holds a truth; we (the gender
hackers and trans among us especially) know that biology is
definitely not the issue. Literally, who cares?--we fuck with
biology: we make friends with our microbiome, we alter our
body’s appearances & systems and we know we are all just
animals. It is capitalism and the church that has created the idea
of essentialized biology and sex throughout much of Western
history.

The real issue is still power, and how power disciplines and
normalizes conceptions of biology in our bodies. It is the
insurance companies that deny our gender affirming surgery, it
is the loopholes we jump through to get hormones, it is getting
harassed for presenting the way we feel, or simply existing in
bodies granted different permissions, and it is the gendered
violence we experience on the street. It is when we are
misgendered by the doctors, our bosses, and family.

Ehrenreich and English further that self-care is not enough,
because we are dependent on the medical industrial system's
technology. In many forms of healthcare this is true, but for
gendered health care, such as the need to access to hormones,
electrolysis and surgery, this is especially true. So this question
burns: What would an autonomous trans healthcare look like?

It would look like this: seizing the technology that keeps us
bound to power.

However, presently underlying structures of support spring
up, even if they are only bandaid solutions on the surface of
the medical industrial system. We look to Yocheved Zenaida
Cohen, a trans woman of colour in the U.S. who raised $10,000
for herself to go to electrolysis school and buy an electrolysis
machine so she could provide affordable electrolysis for other
trans women. We look to trans health message boards. We look
to friends and strangers sharing hormone prescriptions. We
look to healers making medicines and spells for transition—in
whatever form that is taking. It is walking your friends home at
night while carrying a knife or glass bottle ready in hand.

Complaints and Disorders ends once these words are taken into
the domain of personal responsibility, “This, to us, is the most
profoundly liberating feminist insight — the understanding that
our oppression is socially, and not biologically, ordained. To act
on this understanding is to ask for more than ‘control over our
own bodies.’ It is to ask for, and to struggle for, control over the
social options available to us, and control over all the institutions
of society that now define those options.”

| am changing and all of a sudden, as if ejected from his seat,
he is fumbling for scraps of clothing to shield me from something
invisible to me.

He says ‘someone is looking at you through the window’

| am wondering if he thinks my breasts emit a kind of poison.

How can we stigmatize the exchange of currency for sex when
we realize that we all, in some way, exchange capital for sex,
sensuality, care? That all work consists of lending one’s body,
against one’s will (necessarily half of the definition of “for pay”),
to the purposes of another person or entity (a capitalist).

All work is coercive, that’s what makes it work.

SELF-CARE CAN’T CURE SOCIAL DISEASES

MOST OF US ARE NOT DOCTORS

Power Makes us Sick (PMS) is a feminist collective focusing on autonomous

health care practices and networks.

P-M-S.LIFE

POWERMAKESUSSICK@RISEUP.NET

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The stigmatization and criminalization of sex work usually
comes down to either a moral judgment that considers the laying
bare of the transactional aspect of sexuality an impropriety, or to
a deep discomfort with agency on the part of women burdened
with the role of providing the feminine as commodity, but it is
rarely concerned with improving the material conditions of the
workers. Law enforcement has always meant the protection of
private property and established economic relations. Socially-
sanctioned police violence against sex workers establishes the
value of certain women over others, through whom race, class,
and gender norms are maintained.

You ask what leads some women to sell sex. We ask what
pressures other women not to.

What sex work raises is the primacy of the relationship between
sexuality and social reproduction. Sex work - economically and
ideologically - reinvests the feminine commodity into itself, and
into networks which support those relations guided by these
knowledges. Physical labor, laying bare the operation of the
sexual economy in everyday life, these networks of workers and
subjectivities return us to the possibility of suffrage and a form of
gain, and to ‘labors of love’, not exchangeable for capital.

We have no desire to collaborate with the powers at be, no
desire to be complicit with a reformist agenda, will not settle until
we have abolished waged work in its entirety, will not settle until
we can return ourselves to these ‘labors of love’, where creative
and cumulative education is a byproduct of corporeal effort, and
not capital.

In contemporary healthcare practices, diagnosis and treatment
has the tendency to reduce ourselves, others, and experiences
to a language of illness. This illness is understood as an the
wickedness to be exacted out from an otherwise sanitary
body and mind. Instead, we wonder what critical education
in responsibility can come from the trauma of an ailing body,
especially when this is witnessed and respected by care
providers. What happens when this is weaponized by those
suffering?

This practice can’t be empty; it can’t be purely discursive.
We simultaneously reject the notion of organization-for-
organization’s-sake while acknowledging the tyranny of
structurelessness. The more we accept accountability as an
ethos for living in our everyday lives, the more resilient we
become in the face of forces and technologies that seduce us
toward purchased escape.

»)
3)

“| don’t want to have children”

| said when the mechanic asked me if | had plans to settle.
He said “well, | guess you're old enough to know by now...”
It was a first for me.

The process of exit is increasingly understood as a tactic for
the ultimate realization of one’s personal or national political
autonomy (eg. Brexit, Grexit, ghosting, the alt-right’s Sexodus,
etc.). The subjectivity of the feminine remains tethered to the
liability of caring for and with others. How does self-recognition
work within these systems of accountability and these feminine
subjectivities? How can these be operationalized, communized,
desirable, or even weaponized? Self-recognition or knowledge
inside this system doesn’t come from identification, but instead
through representation through nodes of experience, which
account for everyone's different expertise. This reality submits
us to the common experience of the inability to exit, and the joy
of being a body accountable to the web of life that intersects with
and supports our own.

This body is any body. Ahuman, an animal, a non-human person,
a plant, an ecology, a body of water. Accountability means
thinking of health before blame, recuperation or education
before culpability, failure, or punishment. It means believing that
you must play a part in healing, before you are unable to play a
part at all.

SELF-CARE CAN’T CURE SOCIAL DISEASES

MOST OF US ARE NOT DOCTORS

WE STARE

DEEP INTO THE
SURVEILLANCE
CAMERAS UNTIL
THEY SHATTER

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CALL TO
ACTION.
RESIST THE
ACT

PROSTITULES
PROTECTION

Power Makes us Sick (PMS) is a feminist collective focusing on autonomous

health care practices and networks.

P-M-S.LIFE

POWERMAKESUSSICK@RISEUP.NET

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The so-called Prostitutes Protection Law is a formidable new
piece of legislation going into effect in Germany right around
the time of the printing of this publication, July 1st, 2017. It
is actually an amendment to the Prostitution Act of 2002,
otherwise known as the “Act on the Regulation of Prostitutes’
Legal Affairs” (rechtsverhaltnisse). Prostitution is basically legal
in Germany and has pretty much been legal or tolerated since
Germany has even been a thing, with sovereign authorities
preferring strict regulation and supervision to the carceral eye.
But the legal measures do not protect and have not protected
sex workers from the social stigma that is associated with their
work, and the nitty gritty aspects of the regulatory framework(s)
demonstrate this. Between 1871 and 1927, sex workers were
required to register with the polizei and undergo a compulsory
gynecological examination in order to work. This ultimately
meant sex workers who did not register were criminalized
(and subject to state and police violence), while those who did
register were forced to work in specific locations determined by
the authorities. Under the Nazi regime women caught working
as ‘freelance prostitutes’ were largely either sent to camps or
forced to work in state-sanctioned brothels. Each brothel had
a doctor on site to ensure that the women maintained a high
degree of ‘hygiene’ including the wearing of perfume.

This imposition of surveillance and control for the sake of ‘health’
is mirrored in the new law, which now requires sex workers to
attend a yearly medical consultation. But let’s take a step back
for a second (not just because this law feels like going backwards
in time). The Protection Law is making it compulsory for us to
register our work, but isn’t the sex, and it isn’t the sex work that
harms us. It is the stigma and the violence that comes from the
narrative of sex workers as ‘fallen women’. As such, what we
need the most is anonymity. But now, we’re only able to work if
we have our ‘whore pass’, provided to us with our picture. Plus,
youll have to consult with a regulatory agent who will determine
that you have the mental capacities to perform your work.

This law portends to protect against sex-trafficking, but in fact
puts the most vulnerable workers in an even more dangerous
and precarious position. An article published by a diverse
group of Berlin-based sex worker activists on July 8th, 2016
summarizes this quite well. “Let’s also not forget: you will only
be able to get your whore ID if you have an official work permit.
This inherently excludes migrants, asylum seekers and many
of the other most vulnerable groups in society that consciously

TRAVAILLER

MAINTENAN

TRAVAILLER
AVEC UN PISTOLET
DANS LE DOS

engage in sex work to simply survive. You have no work permit,
you get no whore ID. You get caught doing sex work in order
to sustain yourself and your family, and you will be deported,
most likely to a country in which sex work is still criminalised and
prosecuted... Those of us who are most vulnerable, poor and
precarious, those who don't have legal work permits and those
who won't pass the mental test for lack of literacy and language
skills will be largely left with no choice, but to end up in illegality.”

SELF-CARE CAN'T CURE SOCIAL DISEASES

MOST OF US ARE NOT DOCTORS

Power Makes us Sick (PMS) is a feminist collective focusing on autonomous

health care practices and networks.

P-M-S.LIFE

POWERMAKESUSSICK@RISEUP.NET

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Well for one, aS a migrant sex worker who already has to
jump through a slew of bureaucratic loopholes and photoshop
documents just to be able to stay in Germany, | don’t have plans
to register. But my relationship to my work is only one among
many, and thankfully the risk | take by not registering is fairly low
not least because | hail from North America and I’m confident in
my tried and true methods for skirting registration of all kinds.
PMS aims to support the mental, physical, and social health
of sex workers not because we believe them to be particularly
‘damaged’, but because we believe that all deserve to be taken
care of. Send us your ideas for how to resist this ugly legislation
and we'll spread the word and take part if it seems right.

For now, we like the call to action put forward by Doha Carmen,
a prostitute self-help organization founded in 1998 for the social
and political concerns of sex workers, especially migrant sex
workers. They suggest that if you register, you register in all
11,000 available places of activity. All places will need to be
informed accordingly. Because you have the right to register
under your chosen artist name, they recommend that we take
this right and register under the same artist name. They call to
register as Alice Schwarzer, an anti-sex work activist who was
instrumental in convincing the Christian Democratic Party (CDU)
that these new laws will help combat trafficking. They claim
that if only one in four sex workers do this, that the authorities
would need to create more than 550 million entries for the
whore passports, send 25 million emails to our future business
locations, and perform a total of 50 million administrative acts.
Gib Repression keine Chance, let’s jam the system where we
can! We would also like to suggest that comrades who are not
sex workers register, too, if they’re able.

You can find out more on their website at donacarmen.de.

BE THE FIST
YOU WANT
TO SEEINA
FASCIST’S
FACE

YOU WILL NOT WIN

Power Makes us Sick (PMS) is a feminist collective focusing on autonomous

health care practices and networks.

P-M-S.LIFE

POWERMAKESUSSICK@RISEUP.NET

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REPORT: ON
BURNING SHIT

My grandmother came from the tradition of letting children roam

from after breakfast until just before dinner time. My mother tells
me stories of burning piles of garbage, tires, paper, shit that
washed up on the shores of the west coast of Scotland from
freighters and fisherman during the summer. Bands of roving
children ruled the hills of her small seaside town setting fires
along the way. By the time my grandfather passed, my granny
was less protective of me than she had been when he was alive,
but still did not afford me the freedom of my mother many years
before. When | lived with her in the summer, every day we had
a routine, where much of the time | was left to my own devices,
thus the afternoon was for burning shit.

Her back garden was expansive with a homemade shed full of
treasures, which all smelled of gasoline. On sunny days, | was
given a box of matches, a loaf of white bread, and free range of
all the scrap wood in the shed or anything else | could find to
burn up against a stone wall that ran the length of her garden.
Happily | sat setting fire making “toast on a stick”.

Of course the thrill of playing with fire had something to do with
it, along with the feeling of independence and responsibility
(*Damn, what if | burn the neighborhood down?*), but there
was something more to it. Something like being sucked into a
hypnotic endless process. “If | keep feeding you, I'll never have
to leave. You'll live forever and so will I.”

The flame, smoke, ash, the white, blue, green, and orange all
spoke to me, in perhaps silent communion with spirits past and
present. | could sit in stillness, hear the fire; lick, feel the radiant
heat, and watch matter be transformed. Even as a child, | could
make sense of what this reflected, a flash of a realization of what
we all become sooner or later.

The use of fire for sacrifice, cleansing, and representation of
animating (life) and destructive (death) forces is found all over the
world in ritual and religious practices. Mesoamerican Indigenous

cultures often centered their cosmological view around the sun
where fire and heat was transformative, a way for the soul to
pass from this realm to other-worldly realms in cremation
ceremonies. Ancient Aztecs believed in multiple souls, the
essence of Tonalli is heat or fire located in the head of all living
beings. The Mayans burned incense in anthropomorphic bowls,
the smoke representing offerings to the Gods and passage of
the soul into the next realm. The symbolism of fire and smoke
in death rituals mirrored the ancient practice of slash-and-burn
agriculture, a Seasonal process to generate life from death.

Throughout history, people have been drawn to smoke as
a way to communicate what they cannot say. In India, Homa
and Yajna, ancient and current fire ceremonies, are performed
(in public or private) during auspicious astrological days or
months, at weddings, and at home for many purposes: to let
go of blockages or obstacles in our lives, to express gratitude
to and communicate with the divine, and to purify oneself or
one’s environment. Symbolic materials such as milk, butter, rice,
barley, or anything of value is offered and the fire is the agent to
manifest gratitude, wishes, hopes, and benefit to those involved.

Many indigenous cultures throughout North America used smoke
as a conduit for communicating with other realms, where often
smoke has additional importance in cleansing an individual,
space, or energy field to prepare for healing. Smudging is the
ritualistic burning of certain herbs and plants to prepare, clear,
and make room for good spirits and positive energy before a
ceremony, ritual, or rites of passage.

While sage and cedar are herbs native to North America,
Impheho is the plant of choice in South Africa. This herb not
only was the first to be used by healers, but also guided healers
in finding new plant medicines. Like sage or cedar, this herb
is used as an antiseptic, to clear and cleanse space, a call to
the ancestors, and to invoke or promote trance states during
ceremony.

There are endless traditions and histories that include the ritual
use of fire and smoke. From the earliest nomadic peoples who
surely ended their day by tending to the fire that would protect
and provide for them throughout the night to the creation
and evolution of simple and elaborate rituals involving fire to
commune with the divine, it seems that on our earth, fire and
smoke captivate and mesmerize the mind. Common threads of
purification, sacrifice, communication, death and rebirth helped
our ancestors organize their lives. Rather than adopting another
culture’s ancient and revered practice that is usually performed

SELF-CARE CAN’T CURE SOCIAL DISEASES

MOST OF US ARE NOT DOCTORS

Power Makes us Sick (PMS) is a feminist collective focusing on autonomous

health care practices and networks.

P-M-S.LIFE

POWERMAKESUSSICK@RISEUP.NET

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by an elder or shaman, you can create your own ritual with
smoke and fire. Stritcly borrwoing from another tradition will
only invoke in you your own representations of that culture’s
objects and symbols. You will be interacting only with your own
knowledge anyway, so it makes sense to create your own webs
of meaning. You can choose what to offer, what to release from
your psyche, and what the fire and smoke represents for you.

Gather materials (optional, aside from something to burn and
something to burn it with) :

xt lighters xt matches xt incense x< burn pit- a cooking pot,
a hole in the ground, your kitchen sink, chiminea (look on
craigslist or at bougie yard sales/estate sales) x< old bills xt old
love letters xt old journal entries xt hate letters 4% junk mail x
sage, mugwort, or cedar xx dried herbs- rosemary, dill, lavender,
hyssop, bay leaf, sweetgrass, rose, myrrh, frankincense, juniper
(find herbs that are native to your region, you can also order
dried herbs from natural catalogs like Mountain Rose Herbs,
The Growers Exchange xi old paperwork (diplomas, test results,
tax forms, certificates, etc. really anything that you don’t need or
want anymore)

Burning paperwork: We place so much value on pieces of paper
that are said to determine or validate our worth as a human. The
state requires that we pass tests, pay fees for certification, or
claim our existence as a real human through pieces of paper.
Not all paperwork of this type is burnable; however, | periodically
go through old “official” paperwork to re-evaluate if | really need
my worth and value tied up in it and burn that shit when | realize
| do not.

Burning old journals or love letters: Sometimes we grasp onto
the past so tightly. Mementos help us process memory and
past emotion, but sometimes part of this process is letting go.
Holding on to physical objects can, at times, exacerbate our
pain or keep us stuck in regret of past actions. Although the
process of burning mementos or journals can be very painful,
the catharsis of letting go is sometimes just what we need in
order to move forward. Psychic space is cleared in our mind
and in our drawers, boxes, or file folders that are only taking
up physical space and collecting dust anyway. After burning
mementos, there may be feelings of regret. It can help to go
for a walk, take deep breaths of fresh air in a green space, and
welcome in the newfound room, while detaching from the past.

Hate letters: Take the time to write a letter to a difficult person (or
system, state, entity, cop, etc.). Maybe they are from your past -
an abuser, a user, someone or something who did not treat you
with care. Put down all your feels towards them on paper. Let it
be as nasty or violent as you want it to be. This letter could also
be towards an idea, a larger body, or a system. When it comes
time to burn the letter(s), stare intently into the flame, ash, and
smoke. Feel free to repeat a clearing phrase that resonates with
you such as, “I free myself from the pain and control you inflicted
on me. | am free to move forward. | am free to embrace all that
is still whole and worthy in me.”

Sage and other herbs: People all over the world have long
burned sage and herbs to clear energy and create a sacred
space. If anyone has entered your home who brought in bad
energy or a strange vibe, if you’ve had an argument with a
partner or roommate, or if you are feeling down, burn any herb
as you walk around your living space in a clockwise direction.
You can use a feather or your hand to waft the smoke towards
your body as you clear your living space.

Smoke meditation: As you burn any of the above items, and
especially with a stick or cone of incense, watch and follow the
whorls of smoke. Offer to the smoke any burdens or weight
that are currently affecting your energy level and mood. Let
the smoke carry these burdens away. Watching the pattern of
smoke is a wonderful way to find more time to be in the present,
more time to let the mind open and flow, and more time to allow
yourself to pause and reflect.

Note: Take the necessary precautions for your situation. This doesn’t have
to be a bonfire of the vanities. If you like, take care to burn a small amount of
items and make sure you have some sort of way to extinguish the fire in case
it gets out of hand. Fire can be destructive, so if we choose to go this route,
let’s try to proceed with tact and with friends. <3

SELF-CARE CAN’T CURE SOCIAL DISEASES

MOST OF US ARE NOT DOCTORS

Power Makes us Sick (PMS) is a feminist collective focusing on autonomous

health care practices and networks.

P-M-S.LIFE

POWERMAKESUSSICK@RISEUP.NET

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REPORT:
LA PUTY SENAL

Tired of police harassment, the sex workers of Constitucion
neighborhood, in collaboration with AMMAR (Argentinian
association of female sex workers) and the Buenos Aires
Public Ministry for Defense (PMD), self-organized to create
“La Puty Senal” (Spanish for “The Slutty-signal”), which is
basically a Whatsapp chat-group turned to App that allows
them to stay communicated and to resist.

The greatest concentration of sex workers in Buenos Aires
is found in the Constitucion hood, specifically in a ten blocks
area near the Train Station. Chris Gruenberg, specialized
lawyer in human rights and coordinator of the program
against institutional violence, received me at the building
of the PMD, located at the core of the red district. While
we walk the streets he shows me how the resistance of
Constitucion’s sexual workers is articulated through militancy
and technology.

Usually, the prostitutes organize themselves by nationality in
order to work: 1 block for the Ecuadorians, turn the corner and
you hit the Peruvians, a little anead the Argentinians, and so
you see a fully-organized working network. Everybody knows
everybody, a lot of them live in hotels around the area and
virtually everyone has a smartphone on all the time. Here’s
the deal: even though that in fact prostitution in Argentina
isn't technically illegal, sexual workers are constantly being
harassed by the police. As | could see as we keep walking,
their Zone is under permanent police surveillance. According
to Gruenberg, who has been working here for a while now;
they're extorting the workers all the time, stopping them for
no reason or charging them with drug possession.

Police procedure is pretty irregular in this part of town:
most of the time, they will not dentify themselves, or if they
ask them for a copy of the contraventive acts the police
will refuse to provide it. AS you can imagine, there’s an
excess of police violence. This “isn’t an arbitrary, isolated,
neither casual police practice, but a pattern of daily and
systematic institutional police abuse agains the sex workers.
Most of the arrests are made under a criteria of race and
gender discrimination,’ says Gruenberg. For example, their
“favourite” targets are Peruvian trans women, even though
they're not a majority, in fact kinda no one is a majority, be it
by gender identity or nationality.

The police have an updated and efficient communication
network, affording them the capacity to react almost
immediately. That's why even though there are more sex
workers than police officers in the streets, it’s them who
were running the streets so far. That being said, the situation
is turning around due to the proliferation of smartphones
by those on our side, and the political organization of these
sexual workers.

That’s how we get to “La Puty Senal”. This app has a panic
switch that alerts a group of other workers and human rights
lawyers in case of arrest, repression or police harassment.
The switch can be activated by the victim or by witnesses
just by pressing repeatedly the on/off button or shaking the
cell phone. An SOS alarm is sent in real time with it’s location
allowing the network to operate quickly. When police see the
victim is not alone, they start to act in accordance with the law.

SELF-CARE CAN’T CURE SOCIAL DISEASES

MOST OF US ARE NOT DOCTORS

Power Makes us Sick (PMS) is a feminist collective focusing on autonomous

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health care practices and networks.

P-M-S.LIFE

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Some time ago, arrests were a business between the police
force versus a person left alone. Now, when they stop
someone who's got the app, the incident turns into a struggle
between two institutions. Also every Wednesday for the past
two years - without interruption thus far - assemblies and
workshops of institutional defense for the workers at the
PMD’s auditorium are being held. “This app comes from the
work on terrain and political organization of the sex workers.
Any technology becomes obsolete if there’s no organization.”

The use of this app becomes indispensable in the context
of Macri’s era, when institutional violence is on the rise,
all the while becoming more systematic, more racist, and
more misogynist. After brutal repression at the massive
demonstration of March 8th (Womans’ Day), in which nearly
twenty women were arrested, most of them queer, they
decided that this tool should be available for more collectives.
“We met with other organizations who are in the fight for the
rights of woman, to think collective strategies against this
new scenario in which we the woman, as a political entity,
are much more vulnerable”, explains Georgina Orellana,
General Secretary of AMMAR.

In the meeting, they talked about adding the defense
protocols inside the app: What to do if you get arrested, how
to prepare yourself for a demonstration, how to efficiently
clean the area, a model of a habeas corpus and contact
information and other data of the city police departments.

La Puty Sefnal can be downloaded on Google Play for
Android. Both versions use little memory (the Lite one is
only 1.95 MB and the complete version 9 MB) and they are
compatible with any smartphone. Once installed, you just
have to add a minimum of five phone contacts to receive the
SOS on their phones if needed.

Let’s look out for one another!

SELF-CARE CAN’T CURE SOCIAL DISEASES

MOST OF US ARE NOT DOCTORS

REPORT

DIY ABORTIONS

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On the kitchen floor of a friend’s house, a woman lays back
on an air mattress. She teaches us a script as she opens her
hips, butterfly style. She is naked from the waist down.

“Say to them ‘This is your exam. You can stop it at any point
and we can try again any time or never again,” She repeats
words she has said to many others and lets us practice on
her body. This is a class unlike any | have taken before. This
is a gynecological exam unlike any | have had. Later, | lay on
a bed while my friend practices the rest of the script we just
learned. “This is my touch on your knee. This is my touch
on your thigh. | am going to take this hand and part your
labia.” Together we figure out how to insert the speculum.
Another friend holds a mirror and a flashlight so that | can
also see my cervix. This beautiful nose-donut in my my body
that moves with my cycles, opening and closing, rising and
lowering, can offer hints about fertility and health. It also is
key to performing a manual abortion.

Later, we use airline tubing and a check valve purchased at a
pet store, mason jars, rubber stoppers, and cannulas to make
menstrual extraction kits, which can remove a pregnancy up
to 8 weeks. They are also useful for completing a regular
period in 30 minutes, rather than the usual few days. You
could use one for every period if you wish and if you have a
friend who can insert if for you. The women who developed
it did so with the hope that it would be part of monthly groups
that meet to socialize and extract each others’ menses.

We learn accumulated herbal wisdom - Queen Anne’s Lace
seeds as a morning-after pill, parsley as a cervical softener,
Black Cohosh or Cottonroot (which historically was used by
enslaved women in the American South) as progesterone
blockers,and mugwort or dong quai as uterine contraction
stimulators.

We also learn that you can use a MityVac from an autoparts
store to conduct a manual vacuum aspiration.

Weeds and auto parts medicine.

SELF-CARE CAN’T CURE SOCIAL DISEASES

MOST OF US ARE NOT DOCTORS

Power Makes us Sick (PMS) is a feminist collective focusing on autonomous

health care practices and networks.

P-M-S.LIFE

POWERMAKESUSSICK@RISEUP.NET

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But why do this when abortion is legal?

Because a clinic abortion should be a choice, but not the
only option. Because | heard too many Christian protesters
yell devastating things to me when | did go to a clinic for
an abortion. Because clinics charge over $500 for a medical
abortion using pills that cost 50 cents each. Because we
don't need the state’s permission to control when and how
we reproduce.

The American Medical Association pushed to criminalize
abortion in the early 1900s in order to push midwives out
of the medical field and to ensure upper class white male
dominancy. When abortion again became legal under Roe
vs. Wade, it was only under these same doctors at licensed
facilities. But people have always performed abortions on
themselves and their friends when necessary.

Be safe, do your research. The Self-Induced Abortion Legal
team at UC Berkeley is useful if you’re american. Note that
in the US, the harshest sentences for self-induced abortions
have been levelled against Women of Color, so protect
yourself and those you work with. <3

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At the beginning of May, some of us went down to Prague
in preparation for some of the work we'll be doing there in
September with Display. Everyone we talked to suggested
that we meet folks at Klinika, a squatted social centre that
started in November 2014. As it turned out, we had a friend
from Berlin playing a show there our first night that we were
planning on going to anyway. Coincidence?

We walked up to the entrance of Klinika that night to see our
friend’s hardcore band the CuntRoaches, and we entered
what obviously use to be a health care center. The architecture
blocky and concrete, with a two-column entrance. Through
the doors the architecture’s foreboding nature melted into the
hodge-podge comfort of a collective space — a free store to
the left, leaky bathrooms to the right, and the door straight
ahead led to a room converted into a bar and shared library.
A beer bottle on a shelf re-labeled read “A dumb under-cover
cop drank this.”

We arrived between sets and went outside for a smoke,
striking up a convo with someone living there. As we sat
down she asked, “Do you see that?”, pointing to the cloudless
night sky. “That’s Venus, and over there is Orion’s belt.” We
talked constellations and astrology in the backyard garden
that grew up the hill. Pockets of people sitting around and
chatting between tall-growing plants. We eventually went
into the show — the screams of femmes purging the anger
from our bodies as we danced.

While there, we met a member of the collective who invited
us to their meeting the next day so that we could introduce
PMS and learn more about Klinika with the hopes of figuring
out something to do together in the Fall. They welcomed us
with open arms, fresh coffee, a translator to help us move
through their agenda, and eventually a cozy place to stay
for a few days during our travels. The stay was the kind of
pleasant life-giving experience that is hard to put into words.
We're excited to come back later this Summer while the
space is still thriving and work with the community this Fall.

Just a few days ago we sat down with Honza, a member of
the Klinika collective, to talk more about how the community
makes decisions, their programming, and what kinds of
challenges they are facing. Here are some excerpts from
that discussion.

SELF-CARE CAN’T CURE SOCIAL DISEASES

MOST OF US ARE NOT DOCTORS

Power Makes us Sick (PMS) is a feminist collective focusing on autonomous

health care practices and networks.

P-M-S.LIFE

POWERMAKESUSSICK@RISEUP.NET

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PMS: Can you tell us more about what kinds of programming is
being held in the space?

Honza: Klinika is a former lung clinic that operated for 50
years. It is actually quite funny because sometimes we get
visitors from the neighborhood who say ‘yeah, you know
when | was a kid | came here for tuberculosis vaccination’
which is kind of interesting. Now the space is squatted
and has been for now almost three years. | think the main
parts of the programming are on the one hand are cultural
things - concerts, exhibitions, sometimes film nights - and
the other part of the programming is educational. We have
a lot of language courses; | think we have seven or eight
different languages that volunteers come and teach. From
the feedback we get, most of the courses are at a very high
level. We also do a huge amount of lectures and debates
and presentations, from activism to politics to sociology and
anthropology, we had some biology or medical lectures as
well, so it is really quite a wide range.

The last thing we provide is really space for people to meet,
both formally (some collectives use Klinika to meet and have
their regular meetings) but also informally. | think that this
is actually the most important function of the space. It is
actually a place where people from various walks of life and
with different political views or different cultural and social
backgrounds can actually meet in one place. | think that’s
what we're going to miss the most if we lose the space.

I’m wondering if there are certain models of organization that you
use, if any. Perhaps you could tell us how you deal with conflict that
arises within the collective or at the space? Is there a certain way
that your meetings are structured?

ll start with the easiest one which is how our meetings work.
It is the usual consensus-based decision making. We are
really really working hard to remove any hierarchies that arise
and of course they naturally do for the reasons that are quite
well known. So we use, with varying success, the progressive
stack. For a while we used a technique where no two males
could speak after one another, which actually worked really
well, but overtime we felt that people had become aware of
the gender inequality so we stopped using it because we felt
that it wasn't necessary anymore. But | think that it actually
taught us a lot even in just the few times that we used it. So,
as | said, we use consensus-based decisions, so anybody
can veto. It happens rarely, when it does it is usually quite a
big problem. Oftentimes the veto is signalling some bigger
problem in the collective.

That actually brings me to the second part, which is how
we deal with conflict. Some conflicts can be solved just by
discussing them in the plenary session, and usually that can
be worked out. But now, we’ve had some conflicts where
people didn't even want to talk about it in the meeting with the
whole collective which is obviously a big challenge because
how do you sort that out. What we basically decided was
to have an outside person mediating the discussion, so we
basically had the meeting with the people who were most
directly involved in the conflict and with an outside person
that everyone knew and trusted but wasn't directly involved
in the collective. That’s kind of ongoing now, so | don’t know
how well that worked, but we used it previously when we
had some problems with sexual harassment, not within the
collective but between people who are close to the collective.
We used this mediation to find some kind of an outcome, and
we ended up banning one of those persons from Klinika. So
there are different ways to sort out conflicts depending on
how deep and how serious the conflict is.

What can you tell us about the kinds of groups that you share the
space with? | remember that there was an alternative kindergarten
active when | was visiting, right?

Yes, one example is the alternative kindergarten. They
are basically an autonomous collective that is close to the
collective of Klinika. Their representatives come to all of
our meetings, but otherwise they work very autonomously.
Parents and kids make decisions collectively, so they actually
include the kids in the decision making as well which is really
quite amazing. | think that’s one of the most amazing parts
of the whole project. First of all, because it brings a whole
different quality to the whole space, it makes the rest of the
people in the house aware that there are kids around and
that they have to behave in a certain way. We're extremely
proud and happy that the the Mothers Fathers Collective are
there and using the space.

How does the community of Klinika support one another with mental
health issues, whether formally or informally?

As you've said, it’s tricky and | think we're not very good at it
[laughs]. The main reason is taking care of such a space is
extremely demanding, and for so most of our meetings we're
just dealing with very practical things that need to be sorted
out. There is very little time to talk as a group; to talk about
how people are really feeling. It is very difficult to feel it as
a priority even though it’s extremely important. We've had

SELF-CARE CAN’T CURE SOCIAL DISEASES

MOST OF US ARE NOT DOCTORS

Power Makes us Sick (PMS) is a feminist collective focusing on autonomous

health care practices and networks.

P-M-S.LIFE

POWERMAKESUSSICK@RISEUP.NET

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many people who are part of the collective basically get burnt
out and either leave the collective, stop working or even move
out if they live there--for reasons that they’re just overloaded.
Maybe some of them didn't feel the support of the people
around them, | don’t know, that’s hard to say. But it’s definite
that we're not really paying enough attention to ourselves.
We're working really really hard for other people, but we
don't really find the time to work with ourselves and within.
And also, since Klinika basically for most of its existence has
been in a precarious state, we have never really know when
it's gonna end, so that makes it harder to set aside time and
say now were gonna deal with internal things. Instead we
say “we don't know if we're gonna be there for two months,
so lets make as much as possible out of the time that we
have” and it just kept moving now for almost for three years.

What is the legal status of Klinika and what is the climate like for
squatters’ politics in the Czech Republic and Prague? Is there
anything you can share about the possibility of your eviction? Is
there anything that comrades from elsewhere can do to support
you?

So legal status is such that there is a lower court decision
that we have to leave. Legally, it is a tricky situation because
we had a contract and they didn’t extend it, which is a little
bit different then when you just enter a building and you

Confetti falling to the street from a window in a large building in the center of
Prague that was temporarily squatted by the collective “Obsad' a Zij” in June.

have no legal relationship with the owner. So here we had a
contract which wasn’t extended for very strange reasons, so
that’s why the court case is taking a long time. The owners
themselves are not quite sure what their legal standing is,
which is actually really great. So legal status now is basically
undecided, the lower court said we have to leave because
the contract ended, and now we're waiting for the appeal.
The appeal in court will start in September.

And the next question about the situation in Prague; well so
three weeks ago we squatted a huge building right in the
center of Prague. [*sparkle fingers and big smiles*] We were
evicted within a few hours. The point of the action was really
more of a kind of demonstration because we wanted to get
the idea of housing, social housing, availability of housing
and empty houses together and get it into the media which
was really successful. So I’m getting to the answer: even
though there are some decisions in the constitutional court
that basically say that the courts have to take into account
the social contexts of evictions etc, still basically if you
squat a house you are evicted in a few hours. The police
immediately come, they don’t wait for any court or anything
like that. Now our lawyer thinks that this is illegal, and Klinika
is going to challenge that. But basically the current practice
is that it’s impossible to openly squat. There are a lot of silent
squats that people don't know about, but to have a an openly
know squat is basically impossible now. So that’s the current
climate which is actually really bad...

.. What we need is that once we know about the eviction, for
people - if they can - to just come in, or if they can’t come in to
do, for example, soli demos in front of the Czech embassies in
the places where they are. And the other part, which is always
hard to talk about is money. From the time that the contract
ended which is now a year and a half ago, we're paying a
fine of about thirty euros a day. Over time it’s a lot of money
and we've paid some of it, but now we are about a hundred
thousand crowns in debt, which is about five thousand euro.
So actually money is really helpful because we will have to
pay this fine, and it’s actually quite a lot of money to pay. So
that’s another way to help, to fundraise or to make a benefit.
Due to the way the building was squatted and the project was
set up it’s all basically fronted by one person, so it’s not the
whole collective that is legally responsible. If she can’t pay,
probably all her stuff will be taken away from her.

SELF-CARE CAN’T CURE SOCIAL DISEASES

MOST OF US ARE NOT DOCTORS

Power Makes us Sick (PMS) is a feminist collective focusing on autonomous

health care practices and networks.

P-M-S.LIFE

POWERMAKESUSSICK@RISEUP.NET

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What does the community around Klinika need to be
‘healthier’?

As we talked about that we can’t find time to take care of
ourselves | think that is probably the biggest need that we
have. To set aside some time, even in the complicated
situation that we are in now, to really talk about ourselves.
And it came up pretty clearly over these three years over and
over like, ‘now we're really fucked, we're really tired’. We have
to start taking care. But you know then a few days passed
and new stuff came up. We'd have to sort out the water, or
the electricity or this and that. And so we just never did that.
We're actually thinking about going somewhere for a few
days, like away from Klinika. And we planned it for several
dates and it never happened, because things were going
on. So | think that’s a need that we have. So the other need
is the space itself. The public part of the house is actually
working quite well, and is quite nice. But the places where
people actually live need a lot of work, and again we prioritize
the places where other people come in and take part in the
project. We put a lot of work into that and so there is not a lot
of energy to take care of the places where people live and
| think that’s another thing that is making it more and more
difficult for people that live in the house.

More information about Klinika can be found
on their website at klinika.451.cz.

ais for ACAB, accountability, autonomy, antifa, antira,
anti-oppression, anti-authoriarianism, abortion, aff
inity, agitation, & onarchy

bis for birth, beds, & botany

eis for eating the rich because they r nutrient dense

fis for free healthcare, first aid, & friends
gis for guts, gender, growing food, & -_

h is for hexing the enemy, healin: sin

for all

iis for

insurgency, indignation, indigestion
jisfor nor

nis for new architectures for different abilities & nurses
ois for oppression

pis for possibility, probiotics, protection, & piss

qis for queering everything

ris for resistance, os ,&revolution

dec couaracla
tis for teaching each other the skills we need
uis for utopia, the uterus, & the union

vis for vigilance & veterinarians

wis for water, wellness, work, weed, aaeeee

x is for xerox copyin:
away

yis for iene aid fucking loud

some of the ABCs of Radical Health Care

SELF-CARE CAN’T CURE SOCIAL DISEASES

MOST OF US ARE NOT DOCTORS

Power Makes us Sick (PMS) is a feminist collective focusing on autonomous

health care practices and networks.

P-M-S.LIFE

POWERMAKESUSSICK@RISEUP.NET

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TWO PRESSURE
POINT EXERCISES
FOR STRESS AND
ANXIETY

From standing, place a tennis ball under your right
or left sole. Roll the tennis ball (as if kneading
bread) back and forth along the inner arch of the
foot (from big toe to just above inner heel), then
roll ball along outer arch (pinky toe side). Then
place the ball just above the center of the heel, just
below the center of the foot and use body weight
as pressure (this is where your two arches meet).

With your knees facing forward, come to seated
on the heels, and place your hands on your lap.
Lean forward and place the top of the left foot into
the sole of the right foot (it should fit quite nicely)
then sit back on the heels placing pressure on the
sole of the right foot.

These are all good for plantar fasciitis!

Frontal Sinus

This point on the wrist is useful to get relief in
anxiety and fear; it is situated on the fold of the
wrist. The exact place of Wrist Point is on the
forearm in the line to last finger (pinky). You can
easily find the Acupressure Wrist Point in the
above picture. Apply mild pressure on Wrist Point
to relieve anxiety.

Applying pressure on Wrist Point every day will
help you to heal fearfulness, emotional stress,
anxiety, memory loss, and tension.

SELF-CARE CAN’T CURE SOCIAL DISEASES

MOST OF US ARE NOT DOCTORS

Power Makes us Sick (PMS) is a feminist collective focusing on autonomous

health care practices and networks.

P-M-S.LIFE

POWERMAKESUSSICK@RISEUP.NET

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REPORT:
PROBIOTICS

Some sloppily formatted and grammatically questionable advice
from a holistic health site that read like it was written by a bot:
yogurt in the pussey for yeast infections. The site touted all
kinds of benefits to probiotics, including treating autism, which
| consider borderline unethical information to spread because
of the tendency of conspiracy-type thinking to spread virally.
Regardless, yogurt in the pusséy seemed harmless and worth
a try. | supplemented my already-yogurt-rich diet (I’m Russian)
with a fancy one claiming to contain live cultures, delivered via
oral syringe every night for a week. It helped somewhat, but
| took the oral anti-fungal I’d been prescribed anyway. | am a
skeptic by nature, but the use of probiotics in this way meshed
well with my interest in (forgive me for coining this term) post-
humanist medicine.

The problem with this type of vernacular holistic health stuff
is that while its heart is in the right place and its conclusions
often totally valid, its suspicion of the medical establishment,
warranted or not, has the effect of dampening interest in
questions like “are there sufficient numbers of live cultures in
yogurt, kefir, whatever, to produce this effect? Do the bacteria
survive the gastric environment when ingested orally? And what
are ways in which we can improve on what is already available to
us in traditions of holistic health using science and engineering?”
It also elicits suspicion from the medico-pharmaceutical
establishment, for the anti-scientific tendencies, but also for
the problems it has the potential to cause in terms of profit and
regulation. The result is that probiotics are under-researched
and poorly understood. This failure to engage with holistic
traditions, or even to acknowledge its debt to them (opiates
derived from poppies, aspirin from the willow tree, virtually all
modern drugs semi-synthetic versions of compounds found in
plants with long histories of pre-modern medical use), is the
primary flaw of western biomedicine. This is a flaw that would
probably be fixed by no-capitalism, but | digress.

A step back: a probiotic is a live microorganism that provides
health benefits when consumed by a human or other animal. The
term came into popular usage in the eighties, but the concept

is generally attributed to Elie Metchnikoff, who postulated that
yogurt was responsible for the unusual longevity of Bulgarian
peasants for whom it was a dietary staple. In 1907 he suggested
that “the dependence of the intestinal microbes on the food
makes it possible to adopt measures to modify the flora in our
bodies and to replace the harmful microbes by useful microbes.”

The word microbiome gets thrown around a lot. It technically
refers to the collective genomes of a set of microorganisms
residing in a given environment, but is frequently used to refer
to the organisms themselves. If you enjoy being pedantic like
| do, the latter are more accurately described by the term
“microbiota”. But it doesn’t really matter one way or the other;
we're all descriptivists here. The human microbiota (that is,
the totality of organisms residing in the environment of a given
human) is naturally of interest to scientists hoping to understand
it in order to prolong life and better health, but also to those
who are chipping away at the myth of unitary, self-contained
personhood.

There have been a number of studies showing promising
results in the treatment of everything from vaginal infections
to obesity. A list of different bacteria and the health benefits of
their presence, reproduced from the article “A Review of the
Advancements in Probiotic Delivery: Conventional vs. Non-
conventional Formulations for Intestinal Flora Supplementation”
in journal AAPS PharmSciTech:

Table |
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lorie
Awl Mbek: ble Anu artic eo

Wiwwtias tks fb

SELF-CARE CAN’T CURE SOCIAL DISEASES

MOST OF US ARE NOT DOCTORS

health care practices and networks.

Power Makes us Sick (PMS) is a feminist collective focusing on autonomous

health care practices and networks.

Power Makes us Sick (PMS) is a feminist collective focusing on autonomous

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a. 2 the bibliography of this zine, including two on Irritable Bowel
©) Syndrome and one on stress-induced gastric complaints. There
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. A prebiotic is a non-digestible (by humans) food product that
a promotes the growth of beneficial microorganisms in the gut.
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== Buy fermented dairy products (yogurt, kefir, ayran, whatever

regional varieties you have available to you) that contain
live cultures. If you have access to farmer’s market style raw
milk products, that’s great. Buy those. (But stay away from
unpasteurized milk if you are pregnant or immunocompromised.)
If not, the following supermarket brands are good: Yakult,
Activia, Yoplait, Chobani, Dannon, Fage. Make sure that you
are buying the right one though- not all of these companies’
products contain probiotics.

== Use probiotic supplements. There are many of these and
they all contain different bacteria in different formulations, so
it is difficult for me to know what will be available where you
live. Flag down a pharmacist and ask what they recommend.

These are supposed to be taken orally, but you can also open
the capsules to use the powder topically (See no. 3), or carefully
insert them vaginally.

== Try a probiotic facial. | like to use packets of powdered

probiotic intended for mixing with water and drinking. Put some
of your favorite oil on your face. Pour some probiotic powder into
your palm. You can wet it slightly, but the point is to use it as an
exfoliant first. Massage into the skin - it should remain granular.
When you've done this, you can begin gently patting water into
the oil and probiotic mixture, which will break up the granules
and “activate” the probiotics. Make sure no granules are left and
allow everything to sit on your face for a bit. Rinse off. If you
prefer not to put oil on your face, just use a probiotic and water
paste instead. (Note: there is no proof that this works. | find it
makes my skin nice and smooth, and helps with redness. You
may find differently.)

== Try making your own probiotic foods. Some easy ones are
kefir, Kombucha, and kimchi. There are lots of step by step guides
to making them online. If you don’t have the time or resources
to make them yourself, buy them at the store - smaller “ethnic”
groceries will often have better stuff than big supermarkets, but
this all depends on where you are.

= Pay attention to your body; to its sounds, smells, to the way it

feels. Find out what makes you feel good, and pay attention to
what doesn’t. Explore slowly and carefully. Remember that the
body is neither a temple nor scaffolding for the mind.

whip Is thing | .
"OVE a laxative

SELF-CARE CAN’T CURE SOCIAL DISEASES

MOST OF US ARE NOT DOCTORS

Power Makes us Sick (PMS) is a feminist collective focusing on autonomous

health care practices and networks.

P-M-S.LIFE

POWERMAKESUSSICK@RISEUP.NET

nrotasso ot Soa
POST EM acs Wy *\ gf Pow ‘)

are the whores of the worst nightmare of the shitstem.

se ig an internationalist collective of anarchist revolutionary queer
eurrectionist PROSTITUTES: rising up to realise our power, using our

| ro-fessional |LLEGALIST skills to sabotage our ideological enemies. We
will disarm and ultimately destroy those who perpetuate the Social War
against us — WAR that is inherent in the fascistic capitalistic Shitstems
imposed on us. They try to render us powerless conformists, through their
sick perversions of ‘Judeo- Xtian Morality’, ‘Law & Order’, and ‘Justice’ —
that only serve to emotionally, spiritually and physically RAPE us.

MALA-PRO-PISMS: 1. Some purported Anarchists believe Prostitutes to be
exploited within a standard superficial gendered framework. We reject this,
we are utter Transgressives and Iconoclasts. There are no binaries, only
the maximal fluidity of gender and sexuality which we gloss as QUEER. We
intrinsically reject and transgress all the ‘norms’ of culture, law, religion,
Capital, that only serve to Oppress us and channel power and wealth to the
same sad sick stunted elite men who beg for our sexual succour.

2. Prostitution is commonly rendered as an inherently a-political profession.
Acrippling, steel-clad boot in the bollocks to that assertion! As anti-
workerists we believe in the formula: Least amount of labour/ for Highest
rates of pay. We have no interest in careerism or ‘respectable’ lowly paid
employment. As avowed HOIZONTALISTS, we find the narrative of the
romanticised working class (i.e/ happy but poor) ‘noble’ proletarian as
deeply offensive as the enduring Orientalist myth of the ‘noble savage’. We
fundraise on our own terms to enable our Autonomy, the time and freedom
lo realise and unleash our own latent Power, and to bestow solidarity on
those we respect in their offensive actions against systemic control. We
reject so-called labour rights and the decriminalisation of Prostitution
demanded by state funded ‘sex worker’ groups and deem these efforts
mere reformism. As Prostitutes, we make more cash in hand in the grimy
undergrowth than working for the legitimated boss. We revel in our outlaw
Criminal status,

THEREFORE We have no desire to reform the system. We are dedicated
'0 its Total Destruction!

)

O
©
O
(SO

Prostitutes have unique access to the ‘elite’: the industrialists, maggot-
strates, our fine representative politicians, religious leaders, the ultra-rich
and their lackeys in the filth. Those who urgently press their grubby money
on us, out of a pathetic desire for affirmation and as an antidote to their
miserable lives. And thereby we have the Power to wreak terror and
humiliation upon them! We are uniquely placed to expose their hypocrisy

ee oe ean aati they Pay us to shit on their faces we take
pokinea at act than their insulated, retarded emotional
responses could comprehend. ,

Under our saccharine smiles ang {gj | | :
for our moment to strike, to humiliat ~ delight, we are watching. eit
directly complicit in perpetuating the cag oe torture those we :
capitalist repression and social war yj, """S 0 State control, asc!

rage. Taste OUR WAR, scumbagg, ~ “VErtly, creatively unleash our

hereby urge our queer and
he * ‘ ete ienngs ctionigt nid whore comrades across the
taboo in realising sabotage of tho ies ea No offensive action is too
our ‘masters’, and the foot soldiers wh, - ould would deem themselves
advocate thieving, drugging, kidnap,
public exposure, and corrupting their
under the banner of the Prostitutes
thicker and quicker than a horny corrupt cop.
In Solidarity with all anarcho-whore saboteurs fighting the social war
through whatever unconventional and direct means are at our disposal.
Avante Prostitutes War Group! No retreat, no surrender, until the last pig is
strung up with the blood-splattered tie of the last industrialist!

VIVA LA PUTA!

nore into & setion paporhs at
Mostthiracsuary poupword persed oe

SELF-CARE CAN'T CURE SOCIAL DISEASES

MOST OF US ARE NOT DOCTORS

Power Makes us Sick (PMS) is a feminist collective focusing on autonomous

health care practices and networks.

P-M-S.LIFE

POWERMAKESUSSICK@RISEUP.NET

UPDATE:
PMS-LED
WORKS HOPS
IN BERLIN

WORKSHOP IN THE STANDIGE VERTRETUNG
(WE CALL IT “THE TREEHOUSE’)

Most of us are not doctors and some of us can't go to the
doctor, but everything that is living will at some point fall ill.
Although we prefer to thrive amongst the well, illness rests
like the other side of the coin. And in another way, we are all
sick under late capitalism or, we are all sick when alienated
from our activity, from the places where we rest, from one
another. We are all crazy when someone or something else
has the ability to diagnose us against our will. When the air we
breathe is toxic, we all suffer indeterminately. As we learn to
take care of one another’s health the state can’t but fail, or at
least we would no longer be bothered if it did. In May PMS led
a workshop called How Are You Feeling Today? We facilitated
a playful discussion to dissect the vocabulary of sickness and
illness. We closed with a visualization exercise towards an
aspirational idea of ‘health’.

This is a short excerpt from the aspirational health visualization
exercise we led to close the workshop. The feedback we got
was that it was ‘dystopic’.

Begin to imagine yourself in an environment that contributes
positively to your overall sense of well-being, this can be as
real or imaginary as you like. This place is bountiful and able to
provide for you. Whatever you need or desire for your physical,
social, and mental health is there for you to invite into the space.
Free from restraints, limits, and scarcity, this environment Is a
vision of yourself completely taken care of. What do you see
in front of you? What do you see to your right and left? What
do you see above and below you? What do you hear? Are the
sounds loud or soft? Near or far? How do you hold your body
in this space? are you sitting, standing, something else? Now
Start to move through this space? walk, run, dance, whatever
feels natural to you. In this real or imagined environment what
aspects contribute to your physical health? What is making
your body feel balanced and like yourself in this environment?
In this environment what kind of food do you want to eat? What
kind of food contributes to this feeling of balance? How do you
lungs and heart feel? What do you notice about how your body
feels as it moves through space?

SELF-CARE CAN’T CURE SOCIAL DISEASES

MOST OF US ARE NOT DOCTORS

LAN dNASIN@MOISSNSAMVNWYAMOd r LAN dNASIN@MOISSNSAMVWYAMOd

SsaITS-Wred . " dsl S-Wred

“SyJOMJOU PUe SedNoeJd sled YesY = | “SyJOMJOU PUe SedNOeId aied YesY
Snowouojne UO HUISNdO} 8AI}D9]}O9 JSIUILUDJ © SI (Sd) YOIS SN Seyey JOMO_d SNOWOUO Ne UO HUISNDOJ 9AI}99]}O9 }SIUILUDJ © SI (SI) YOIS SN saeyeyy JOMO_d

ANTI-G20 INFO EVENT

We recently led an info and skillshare day for anti-G20 efforts.
We spent the day with friends, strangers, kids and adults hanging
out in Tempelhofer Feld. Rhythms of Resistance, an action
oriented Samba band played music, we gave out information
about the G-20 to folks in the park, gave complimentary anti-
surveillance make-overs and did a visualisation exercise
together about social health. We also gave lots of *stickers* to
young people, it was fun.

Anti-surveillance makeup can be used to render face both face
detection and face recognition software useless. It is important
to protect onself from detection while participating in street
actions in order to prevent the repression that can come after
the event. Also, this makeup is really fun and if more of us do
it, the more our identity will be hidden from the machines and
those who would use them to hurt us. This method of detection-
thwarting makeup in the form of fabulous designs is inspired
by the dazzle camouflage first used by the British Royal Navy
in WWI with influence from zoology, where ships were painted
with elaborate striped patterns to confuse the eye rather than
to conceal. Through trial and error, these techniques that have
been shown to fool the cameras too.

EILLANCE MAKE UP

“4

AIT! SURV

SELF-CARE CAN'T CURE SOCIAL DISEASES

MOST OF US ARE NOT DOCTORS

Power Makes us Sick (PMS) is a feminist collective focusing on autonomous

health care practices and networks.

P-M-S.LIFE

POWERMAKESUSSICK@RISEUP.NET

For anti-surveillance makeovers, you can use shading on
the face with makeup as well as clever use of the hair to hide
key facial features to prevent detection. The basic principles
of this technique are (1) create high contrast (using primarily
black and white makeup is best), (2) de-emphasis of the facial
features, (3) break up key facial regions such as the forehead,
cheeks, nose bridge, and lips, (4) asymetry, (5) use a variety
of patterns used for different participants.

You can learn more about this technique through some of these
youtube tutorials and links:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lwiFwdCGjLs
http://dismagazine.com/dystopia/evolved-lifestyles/8115/anti-
surveillance-how-to-hide-from-machines/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qCUnwCaqfgu8s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EZnCoO7Kd-4

See you in the streets <3

LET THE
END OF OUR
ILLUSORY
COMFORTS
PRECIPITATE
OUR TOTAL
REFUSAL

YOU WILL NOT WIN

Power Makes us Sick (PMS) is a feminist collective focusing on autonomous

health care practices and networks.

P-M-S.LIFE

POWERMAKESUSSICK@RISEUP.NET

UPDATE:
THE SQUAT
PROJECT
(PROYECTO
CUCLILLAS)

Proyecto Cuclillas (The Squat Project) is an art collective
composed of some Chileans living in Buenos Aires. The Project
consists of a research platform and transdisciplinary practice
whose object of study is the body and its representation.
The body is understood as political territory and its analysis
focuses on two specific positions: the body sitting and the
body squatting.

“Antes de estos extranos instrumentos de tortura arquitectonica-
linguistica-fisica-politica, no nos sentabamos. No teniamos “asiento’,
“sitio” o “situacion”. Asi que, al igual que el Estado mismo, estas no-
cosas omnipresentes y demasiado-solidas nos rigen. Y para evitar
que lo notemos, aseguran ser solo sillas, una pura necesidad.”

Jimmie Durham, Entre el mueble y el Inmueble

On June 22, we met with a group of friends at the Lezama Park,
in Buenos Aires, to perform a series of “acts of decolonization
of the body”. These poetic group actions consisted on
relational performative interventions we designed to activate
micro-social environments and raise awareness of the political
potential of our bodies. As a collective, we've been thinking
and reading and about this, but it wasn’t until that day that we
really started occupying the body as a base for exploration
and problematization of ideas.

EEE,

‘

That evening, we sat in a “human circle’, we learned to make a
“no-chair” with two belts, we measured the distance between
the heel and the floor of each participant squatting. Finally,
we collectively cut the legs of a chair. All this may sound a bit
nonsense when you read it on paper, so you can check our
activities out by visiting our YouTube channel and Instagram.
Each activity gave a margin of intervention and the response
from our friends was great. The premises were quite basic, which
allowed the active participation of them in search of solutions,
proposals, opinions, comments, etc. This actions were a playful
way of sharing the benefits of adopting the squatting position
to perform different activities of our everyday life. They also
allowed us to discuss about the imposition of the use of a chair
for working, eating, transporting ourselves, studying, etc.

You can watch our videos on YouTube (user Proyecto cuclillas)
& follow us on Instagram @ProyectoCullillas.

SELF-CARE CAN'T CURE SOCIAL DISEASES

MOST OF US ARE NOT DOCTORS

Power Makes us Sick (PMS) is a feminist collective focusing on autonomous

health care practices and networks.

P-M-S.LIFE

POWERMAKESUSSICK@RISEUP.NET

ONE POSSIBLE
WAY TO HEX

hexing is all about understanding how you feel presently and
articulating how you want to feel. we shouldn’t shy away from
feelings of revenge or hatred. practicing magic can be a healthy
way of processing these feelings as well as the possibility of
arranging coincidences in beneficial way. It sounds obvious, but
it is the practice of clearly Knowing what our desires are, and
realizing them.

there are some basic components to making a spell or a hex, but
the details are totally up to you. this is a simple outline but feel
free to deviate and be creative, follow your instict. do what feels
right to you.

you will want to prepare the following: (a) meditation and
visualization, (b) black candles, (c) incense or any type of smells,
(d) a psychic link which is anything that comes from the person,
place, or thing you intend to hex or something that reminds you of
that entity (can be hair, an object, adocument, a picture, something
like that), (e) a clear intention of what you want to happen based on
how you feel and how you will feel if your desired results manifest.
its very important that you think this through all the way and have
no regrets. be sure you are sure. take your time.

**note about protection** i don’t spend too much time on this
because i don't believe things will reverse and come back on
me. people like to say that metaphysical things don’t happen to
those who don't believe in them. i think this also means that you
can cherry pick the metaphysical things you allow to happen. It
is worth looking up protection spells if you are worried about it. |
like to wear a special rabbit ring that has some special watership
down magic in it.

okay, first you want to be in a safe space to do magic. maybe get a
friend or a few to do it with you. it can be in your room, or outside,
by a river...

draw out a circle on the ground, with your finger or with chalk.
you can put candles on the outside. light the incense. to open, it
can be nice to read a selection from a book you like or something
relevant just to get things started.

in the circle take out whatever object you have that creates your
psychic link. state your intention. you can say it over and over
again. or you can write it down.

you want to get really worked up here. call up all that anger you've
been hanging onto and direct it totally onto the object. here’s
where the meditation and visualization comes in. you want to
create some sort of dramatization of the events you want to have
happen. you can add to the mix something that is from you. it can
be piss, blood, a bracelet, string, spit, or a somatic experience
such as dancing, singing, cursing, chanting, whatever works.

when you're done wrap up the object(s) in a cloth or bind it in
string and bury it with something gross like dog shit. or you can
gather it up in a big pile and torch the mother fucker or throw it in
the river and send it downstream. bye.

i think it is a good idea to end by reaffirming your strength and
awesomeness. be present in the moment and love yourself. and
love your friends. its best to go through this with at least one
other person you feel safe with and you can tell each other that
everything will be ok, because it will.

@OUVRA

SELF-CARE CAN’T CURE SOCIAL DISEASES

MOST OF US ARE NOT DOCTORS

Power Makes us Sick (PMS) is a feminist collective focusing on autonomous

health care practices and networks.

P-M-S.LIFE

POWERMAKESUSSICK@RISEUP.NET

Anonymous, “Archipelago-Affinity, Informal Organization and
Insurrectional Projects”. 2012. —https://machorka.espivblogs.
net/2015/06/17/archipelago-affinity-informal-organization-and-
insurrectionnal-projects-enitfr-2012/

Anonymous. Beyond Socialist Feminism. Alternatives, Detroit,
Michigan. 1976.

Anonymous, “Taking Account of our Politics: An Anarchist Perspective
on Contending with Sexual Violence.” June 6, 2014. http://www.
linchpin.ca/?q=content%2Ftaking-account-our-politics-anarchist-
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Kato-Kataoka, Akito et al. “Fermented Milk Containing Lactobacillus
casei Strain Shirota Preserves the Diversity of the Gut Microbiota
and Relieves Abdominal Dysfunction in Healthy Medical Students
Exposed to Academic Stress.” Applied Environmental Microbiology
82.12 (2016). http://aem.asm.org/content/82/12/3649.short

Govender, Mershen et al. “A Review of the Advancements in Probiotic
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articles/PMC3909163/

me: mom im sick can i stay home?

mom: youre not sick let me see..omg
honey you are sooo fucking sillick
go back to sleep ill call the school

SELF-CARE CAN'T CURE SOCIAL DISEASES

MOST OF US ARE NOT DOCTORS

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